


Paperwork

by birdthatlookslikeastick



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Other, write about what you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 16:06:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8630524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdthatlookslikeastick/pseuds/birdthatlookslikeastick
Summary: Doctor Henry Morgan is, amongst other things, an immigrant - and a change in the rules for permanent residency threatens to reveal his immortality.





	

Henry Morgan heaved an enormous sigh as he pushed past a Hindu family waiting glumly in the New York Citizenship and Immigration Office. He sat in an empty chair as he crumpled and smoothed out his take-a-number slip repeatedly. His number read 84. The number on the screen was 52.

He was remarkably ill-suited to sitting patiently in a room, waiting for a computer to call his number.

Everything had been going so well until the recent election, frankly, when the US government had suddenly became very isolationist. It had the unpleasant effect of highlighting an aspect of Henry's identity he'd largely left in the past. Henry was many things: a two-hundred-year immortal, a medical examiner, a father, a gravedigger, a friend, a connoisseur of most of the finer things in life. But now, first and foremost, he was an immigrant.

For Henry, the danger was always that his immortality would be discovered, and it didn’t matter _how_ he was discovered. He watched the numbers tick up slowly and steadily. 53. 54. 55. The screen stalled there.

Henry wasn't an American citizen; he'd never been confident enough in his dodgy paperwork to apply. Rather, he was here on what was charmingly still called a "green card", despite the fact that the cards were no longer green. The permanent residency card had the tremendous advantage of relying upon a British passport, and he knew how to get those falsified. He couldn’t very well have a document that listed his true age, which essentially ruled out any legitimate way to be in the country. The web of dubious documentation supporting Henry's presence in the USA was, he had to admit, very precarious; it had to be essentially assembled anew each time he renewed his permanent residency status. But in the end, it had always been a simple matter of mailing in the forms.

This year, however, many aspects of the US immigration process were becoming more tightly controlled, including the green card renewal process. The renewals now took place in person, in an interview setting. Henry wasn't at all sure what was going to happen.

_Why didn’t I apply for US citizenship while it was easy_. Then again, it had never been easy; the citizenship application had been more forms, more paperwork. At the time, he had made the call that his subterfuge was _more_ likely to have been detected in the citizenship process than if he just stuck with what he knew. He couldn't have known that one day, the climate would change the way it did. 

Well, no, that’s not quite right, either. In two hundred years of life in Europe and America, he had seen the rise and fall of many regimes like the one running America. The signs were all there, and yet he’d willfully ignored them. Things were going so _well_.

57\. 58. The Hindu family quietly got up—a mother, a father and three young children—and shuffled off towards the glassed-in interview area at the back of the office. 

\---

Immigration had always been a matter of standing in a long line, clutching a handful of paperwork and hoping it would be enough.

The first time Henry had immigrated to the USA, it was 1885, and he had just landed at the immigrant inspection depot at Castle Garden in Manhattan, along with a ship full of largely Irish immigrants. A lot of Irish people had come to America in those days, with its promise of cheap labor and liberty. The reality, rather, started with a brutal overfull boat ride across the Atlantic, followed by an equally brutal stay in the holding areas. He had managed to avoid contracting cholera on his ride across the Atlantic, unlike many of his shipmates. And, looking back, he probably had contracted smallpox in the Castle Garden holding area, but his immortality purged the disease from his veins before the symptoms progressed. He certainly had the headaches and the influenza symptoms as he waited, hunched over, in the long queue of ragged men in front of the immigration desk.

He gradually worked his way forward. A younger fellow in front of him was attempting to give his name to the registrar in the booth. 

"Pádraig," he said, clearly and slowly. "My name is Pádraig O'Conghalaigh. P-a-d-".

"Well, it's Patrick Connelly here," said the official. "We don't speak that way." He wrote "Patrick Connelly" on the sheet of paper in front of him and waved him through. The next Henry would see of him would be five years later, as a patient, bedridden and delirious in a Manhattan tenement.

Henry stepped up. "Henry Morgan," he said.

The official looked down at him. "I can spell that one, " he said. "You seem a little out of place. What brings you to America?"

Henry half-smiled, tensely. "Work," he said. "The chance of a new life. I am a doctor." He handed over his stack of paperwork to the official.

The official nodded. "Lord knows this lot needs one." The official traced his finger down the page, frowning. "Says here you were born in... the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty-one, in London?"

Henry nodded. "That's right." But it was not right. He had been close to a hundred years old already; the stack of paper that the official was holding was full of falsified documents. It was the first time he'd had to forge paperwork in such an egregious way, and everything hung in the balance. Clearly he had not paid dearly enough for them, as the registrar was shuffling the pages and frowning. "Wait here," said the man, half-standing from the desk. 

Henry's heart nearly stopped—figuratively speaking of course—but all was saved when a cry of "FIRE!" went up at the back of the crowded room; a roughhousing group of children had knocked over a large oil lamp, to disastrous effect. The official craned his neck, determining whether his stack of papers were threatened or not, and then sighed, lettering in "Henry Morgan" underneath "Patrick Connelly". "I dare say your services are going to be needed directly, Doctor. Welcome to the United States of America." He passed Henry a form, packed up his things, and shuffled out of the office.

Henry exhaled gratefully, stuffed the invaluable paper into his satchel and dashed for the rapidly developing scene at the back of the room. Somewhere back there there would be a burn victim in desperate need of medical attention. 

\---

The sign buzzed again, and showed Henry's number: 84. What had taken them so long? It had been stalled on 83 for nearly twenty minutes… Henry folded his overcoat and walked back into the interview room. _Well, here we go again_ , he thought.

Far from the chaotic scene in 1895, the room Henry entered was quiet and completely empty but for a single desk with a computer terminal, at which sat an immigration officer. His nametag read "J. Pierce." He was middle-aged, with a well-kept beard flecked with grey, and piercing blue eyes behind a wire-rimmed set of glasses. Behind the man was mirror, evidently half-silvered; beside that was a picture of an American flag. 

"Henry Morgan?"

"Yes, that's right." The interview proceeded as usual. What do you do, where do you live, how long do you intend to live in the USA. Crime, drugs, disease tests, ties to terrorist organizations. That last one was new to Henry.

The official—Pierce, Henry supposed, though he wasn't about to refer to him by name—flipped through the stack of paperwork, entering data into his computer, unsmiling. "Everything seems to be in order, sir. I have just one question that I was hoping you could clear up for me."

Henry nodded. "Of course."

The official turned the monitor to Henry. "We have access to various historical records, and I'm turning up a doctor, by the name of Henry Morgan, who immigrated to the USA in... let me see... 1895. Seems odd that we'd retain such old information, but it is striking, is it not?" 

Oh no. "Really? Well, it is a fairly common name... But yes, I did have ancestors who immigrated around that time. One was in medicine."

"It seems that there was a fire that day in the facility, and we have on record a picture of the doctor attending the event." The man pressed a couple of buttons, and a digitized front page newspaper article appeared on the screen, with Henry Morgan's face plainly apparent.

"Oh, my goodness! I do believe that would be my great-grandfather Dr. Morgan," said Henry, wildly improvising, willing himself not to scan the room nervously for the security cameras.

"And yet he applied for immigrant status again thirty-four years later in 1929. It seems odd that he would have then left the USA, gone back to England, only to re-immigrate. Then again, he seemed to retain his, er, youthful glow. And, " Pierce added, flipping through what were plainly a long list of images of Henry over the years, "have such a long string of remarkably similar children, all with the same face, all with an... itch, if you will, sir, to cross the Atlantic at the age of thirty-five."

All the blood had drained from Henry's face. "It certainly appears that way. You have... rather complete records."

Pierce nodded. "Well, when you've been working at this job as long as I have, you learn to keep an eye out for interesting cases. I've been in this line of work a long time." He paused and eyed Henry over the wire frames of his glasses. "A very, very long time, Doctor Henry Morgan." He stood up and passed the packet of papers back to Henry. 

"No need to retake the photo the next time you come in here, sir. Have a pleasant day." 

Shaken, Henry left the building, walking back to the antiques shop. Following his old habits, he took a circuitous route; it helped him shake off the idea that he was being watched.

As he walked, his mind racing, Henry once again counted his blessings. Abe, Jo. A stable job, a roof over his head. Hell, he had permission to work and pay taxes, if not to vote... He had a bottle of aged single-malt whisky at home which, if he were to hazard a guess, would likely have been beyond the means of a lot of the people waiting in that building, and probably most of the people _working_ in the building. However perilous his situation, he _still_ had it good. Even so, his safety net was woven solely out of his obscurity, and thus the big shifts in the world rattled all the way down to the little safe abode he'd carved for himself in Manhattan.

If it wasn't for moments of kindness by those who could help, he might well have been in real trouble.

At home, he opened the file of papers the agent had handed to him. In it was a photocopy of an ancient immigration record, with perhaps thirty names, mostly anglicized Irish ones. The second-to-last one was Patrick Connelly. The last was Henry Morgan. 

The sheet was dated 1895, and signed by Registrar Jason Pierce.


End file.
